Vibrato

Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. I don't teach vibrato until 8th grade when the students are capable to play all the notes in tune. Intonation is really important before they learn how to vibrato. It takes a long period of time to teach this technique. Any of my orchestra students are desperate to learn vibrato. They think it is really cool. And I think it is a great technique to add expression to the music. Past few years, I struggled teaching vibrato. When I teach it to individual student, it is much easier. But, it is pretty challenging to teach vibrato to 40+ students at once. I demonstrate and explain to them, but I thought it would be nice to show the video that everyone can see well. (When I demonstrate to the class, some of the students who sit in the back can't really see my hand). So, I found this great vibrato teaching video from Youtube(I love this website). He had a clear explanation and showed his hands as he explained how to vibrato. We as string teachers ask students to vibrato slowly first then gradually get faster. We watched the video and a few of students needed an individual help, so we had a morning vibrato class. It worked out great.